He did; and "from that moment for more than nine months he almost lived at Melbourne House." The rest, in Lady Caroline's opinion--at all events in one of her opinions, expressed in an angry letter--was all William Lamb's fault. "He cared nothing for my morals," she remarks. "I might flirt and go about with what men I pleased. He was privy to my affair with Lord Byron and laughed at it. His indolence renders him insensible to everything. When I ride, play, and amuse him, he loves me. In sickness and suffering he deserts me." That protest, however, is wholly unjust, and only partly true. A married woman who has no sooner met a man than she arranges to dine _tête-à-tête_ with him is hardly entitled to ascribe her flirtation to her husband's contributory negligence. Lady Caroline not only did that, but also, in her wilful way, plunged at once into a compromising correspondence. Her very first letter to Byron, according to Rogers, "assured him that, if he was in any want of money, all her jewels were at his disposal." In another letter of approximately the same date we find her writing: "The rose Lord Byron gave Lady Caroline Lamb died in despite of every effort made to save it; probably from regret at its fallen fortunes." Evidently Lady Caroline had thrown herself at Byron's head before William Lamb guessed what was happening. Afterwards, no doubt, he knew what the rest of the world knew. But he also knew--what the rest of the world did not know, and what Lady Caroline herself only imperfectly realised--how froward and changeable were his wife's moods, how great was the risk of hysterical explosions if those moods were crossed, what a "handful" she was, in short, and how very difficult it was to handle her, and so he left things alone. Leaving things alone, indeed, was William Lamb's regular formula for the solution of the problems alike of public and of private life. He believed that problems left alone tended to solve themselves, just as letters left unanswered tend to answer themselves. On the whole the principle had worked, if not ideally, yet well enough for the practical purposes of domestic life. Things had happened before, and, being left alone, had ceased to happen. In his desk lay a letter relating to some previous ebullition the particulars of which are wrapped in mystery. "I think lately, my dearest William," Lady Caroline had written, three years before, "we have been very troublesome to each other." It was true, and it had not mattered. The fire, if there had been a fire, had burnt itself out. The hysterics--it is not to be doubted that there were hysterics--had subsided with the passing of the occasion which had called them forth. The clouds had been dispersed, and the sun had shone again. Why should not this chapter in his domestic history repeat itself? He was very fond of his wife; he hated rows; he wished to take no risks. The best way of avoiding risks was to humour her.